1,720,956 research outputs found
Status, Challenges and Opportunities of Environmental Management in Ethiopia
Full text linkOur planet’s capacity to prolong life is eroding due to the wide disparity between consumption, production and waste assimilation capacity of the environment. Ethiopia is situated in the Horn of Africa about 79% are employed in the agricultural sector. Since the mass of Ethiopian population is totally dependent on limited natural resources as their primary source of income and strive to test nature by unlimited human growth. Looking into Ethiopian history one might come across a few stories of environmental management by the state. The easiest evidence indicating some form of protection of natural resources was found in the fourth century AD. However, the first professionally organized forest management intervention started in Ethiopia during the brief period of Italian annexation (1936–41). Yet, the country faces many environmental challenges including deforestation, soil erosion, declines in soil fertility, loss of water quality and biodiversity. Other, important environmental challenges include spread of invasive and alien species, urban outdoor air pollution (mainly in Addis Ababa), and toxic household wastes. As various figures estimated, about 1.24 million ha of natural high forests cleared for agricultural expansion between 1990 and 2014. The average annual deforestation rate is 1% which is high compared to other Sub-Saharan African countries (0.6%). It is estimated that unless action is taken to change the traditional development path, an area of 9 million ha might be deforested between 2010 and 2030. The major opportunities that obtained in environmental management includes improve governance. The Climate Resilient Green Economy (CRGE) is probably the major fundamental initiative Ethiopia adopted recently. CRGE is attached in the GTP and designed with a vision of achieving a middle-income status by year 2025 (FDRE, 2011). It attempts to systematically combine attaining sustainable economic growth, with combating adverse impacts of climate change. Keywords: Status, challenges and opportunities, environmental managemen
Bio-Gas Technology Adoption in Rural Ethiopia: It’s Effect on the Crisis of Deforestation
Full text linkIn developing countries, like Ethiopia, high population growth is the root cause of deforestation. The population has been increasing considerably since the turn of the 20th century with an annual growth rate of 2.58%. Either searching for new agricultural land or to promise the firewood demand people vastly encroached into forest land, this creates severe stress on the environment. As various figures explained, about 1.24 million ha of natural high forests cleared between 1990 and 2014. Since, nearly all of the households in rural areas and over 20 percent in urban centers depend on fire-woods, the situation leads to high rate of deforestation. To lessen the crisis of deforestation and to play down the high reliance on it the Ethiopia Alternative Energy Development and Promotion Center (EAEDPC) has launched the Biogas Plants to be reach at least 10,678 households between 2008 and 2014 in the selected Woreda’s of four regions of the country, namely, Oromia, Amhara, Tigray, and SNNPR. However, despite the provision of the technology, a study that strongly concerned and assesses about the contribution of biogas plant for the problem of deforestation in particular and its advantage for sustainable development in general was lacking. To clearly observe the effect of biogas plant for various development activities the conversion factor was employed. The results confirmed that the scattered 10,678 bio-digester plants started to bring tangible benefits. Commencing this movement about 8732 tons of charcoal 27,162 tons of fuel wood and 5336 hectare of forest was saved. Moreover, about 66,463 [t] of biomass and 485 [t] of fossil fuel was substituted with the total implemented plants. This leads to the reduction of 64,684 [t CO2eq] per year. Besides, 43,662kt of organic matter is made available as organic fertilizers. This makes farmers to be more productive within a small parcel of land. Hence, Biogas plant is environmental friendly, beneficial to a society and can augment the income of people; this lead to a sustainable way of development. Keywords: Deforestation; Biogas technology adoption; Sustainable development
Income contribution and adoption potential of apple based agroforestry on homestead farms in West and North Shoa zones of Ethiopia
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Apple based agroforestry in Dendi Woreda, Oromiya Region: Income contribution and determinants for adoption
Full text linkA study was conducted to evaluate and compare households’ income from apple based agroforestry system and identify factors that influence its adoption by smallholder farmers in Dendi Woreda, Oromia region. Two kebeles’ were purposefully selected and from which 250 households were randomly taken, where 33 were adopters of the technology and the remaining 217 were non-adopters. To obtain the necessary information, both primary and secondary data were collected and focus group iscussion was conducted. The result revealed that farmers predominantly carry out various livelihood activities such as production of grain crops, livestock, vegetables, and apple fruit. In agri-horticulture agroforestry approach apple trees were integrated with vegetables at homesteads by adopters. The mean gross income of adopters from apple fruit was 58,234.85ETB ha-1 yr-1. Adopters’ mean annual gross income from vegetable + apple fruit was 344,602.3ETB ha-1 yr-1 and mean annual gross income of non-adopters from vegetable was 219,932.9ETB ha-1 yr-1. The income obtained from apple contributed 17 per cent to the income of the agri-horticulture system. Non-adopters annual net income from vegetables was 191,645.13ETB ha-1yr-1 and adopters’ annual net income from vegetable + apple was 312,378.79ETB ha-1 yr-1. The agri-horticulture system contributed 1.63 times higher net revenue for adopters in addition to its nutritional value. However, adoption of apple based agroforestry system was significantly influenced by different factor such as age (+), formal education levels (+), livestock holding (+), distance from market to home (+), sex (-) and total land holding (-). In order to maximize the benefits from the system land users are advised to follow integration of apple fruit trees in their food production activities incorporating their own farm resources to minimize input costs. Policy makers are also expected to advocate the systems performance in the study area and beyond.Keywords: Agri-horticulture system; Apple tree adoption; Household incom
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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